NICOSIA, Cyprus — When the power cuts out and the blades of his outsize electric fan no longer spin, Joseph Piripitsis steps out of his convenience store in hopes that a breeze will cool him off in the suffocating, 39 degree Celsius (102.2 Fahrenheit) summertime heat.
A deadly explosion that killed 13 and shut down Cyprus' main power plant and triggered an energy crisis has wreaked such damage to the nation's economy that it may need a bailout, the country's top banker warned Wednesday.
"I believe that the economy is now at a state of emergency," Orphanides said in a July 18 letter to President Dimitris Christofias, which was obtained by The Associated Press.
He recommended enacting more austerity measures to deal with the escalating crisis that has forced homes, businesses and government offices go without air conditioning in the sweltering midsummer heat after the electricity authority enacted rolling, two hour power cuts across the Mediterranean island.
The billion-euro Vasiliko power station, damaged when gunpowder confiscated from an Iranian chartered ship in 2009 and stacked in an open field at a nearby naval base blew up, supplied more than half of the island's 1,100 MW demand. Officials say it could take many months before it becomes fully operational again.
In the meantime, life has changed. Many Cypriots have curbed air conditioning use; Kids home after school trade their computer games for old-fashioned board games; Most people avoid elevators, for fear of getting stuck.
"We don't know how long this will last," said Piripitsis, 77, who has also seen his business drop off as customers just don't buy lukewarm soft drinks.
That's because the electricity authority officials don't know themselves. A damage assessment is still being completed.
What is clear is that it could have been a lot worse. Commerce Minister Antonis Paschalides admitted that officials went through "difficult, anxious moments" in the immediate aftermath of the explosion to keep the grid from collapsing entirely.
"The greatest success after the tragic catastrophe was that we kept the electricity supply system alive," Paschalides said.
Power cuts are limited to a single, two-hour, fifteen minute stoppage in any given area on the island per day, while the island's water desalination plants, hotels and emergency services remain exempt.
Authorities have appealed for help, and Greece and Israel have sent over generators. Even rival Turkish Cypriots in the breakaway north of the divided island have also pitched in with a 90 MW electricity supply from their own grid.
But the shortfall remains significant and authorities continue to plead with the public to reduce power usage as much as possible by primarily avoiding a summertime necessity — power-draining air conditioning units.
"Although the situation has improved somewhat, the energy crisis continues and we have to be very careful," said Paschalides.
Most Cypriots have heeded official appeals, carrying out washing and ironing at night. Some conscientious citizens have set up a page on the social networking site Facebook where whistleblowers name and shame energy-wasting businesses.
One entry on Wednesday praised a bakery in the Nicosia suburb of Ayios Dhometios for turning off its interior lights overnight, but castigated another in the same suburb for looking like "a Christmas tree."
But a groundswell of anger over how the disaster unfolded has yet to subside. Thousands continue to stage nightly protests outside the presidential palace, demanding the government be held to account for what they claim was official negligence.
The ministers of defense and foreign affairs have already resigned over the disaster that has seriously eroded confidence in the embattled government of President Dimitris Christofias. Chants of "murderers" at the protests mix with calls on Christofias himself to quit.
Compounding the anger is the dawning realization that the disaster has nudged the Cypriot economy, which had largely escaped Europe's debt crisis, to the brink.
The government is set to unveil the first batch of austerity measures later this week, in the wake of several credit rating downgrades over Cypriot banks' exposure to bailed-out Greece.
Economist Stelios Platis said the impact of the blast and ensuing damage could shave up to a percentage point off the island's growth forecast for 2011 of 1.5 percent. In monetary terms, that's between €180-350 million ($256-497 million), which could add an additional 1 to 2 percent burden on Cyprus' budget deficit which now stands at 5.3 percent.
"This makes our life difficult," said Piripitsis' 42-year-old daughter Martha, a bank employee who helps her widowed father at the store on her off hours. "Who's going to pay for this damage, won't it be the people? Our economy was already shaky, now it's really going backward."